Cuomo Is Open to ‘Tweaks’ in Ethics Panel

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Monday that he would be open to seeking changes in one of the signature achievements of his time as governor, a new state ethics commission, as a former member of the panel warned of “possible illegality and corruption” and other commissioners worried that the body was losing its credibility.

The ethics commission met on Monday to discuss its investigation of sexual harassment allegations against Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, a powerful Brooklyn Democrat, and voted to proceed with what appears to be a broader inquiry, though the precise scope was not clear.

A key question in the Lopez scandal has been the use of public money by the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, to pay a confidential settlement to two former employees who accused Mr. Lopez of harassing them.

The commission’s vote came on a day of developments related to the Lopez scandal, which is also the subject of a criminal investigation.

The case has become the first major test of the new state panel, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, which met last week to discuss the allegations against Mr. Lopez but did not immediately authorize a full-fledged investigation into the handling of the matter by Mr. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat.

On Friday, in response to concern over the scope of the ethics investigation, Mr. Cuomo threatened to install a special panel to investigate the scandal, and a member of the ethics commission, Ravi Batra, complained about political interference in the commission’s work and resigned.

On Monday, Mr. Batra sent an eight-page letter to the governor — whom he likened to “the ‘prince’ in Mark Twain’s ‘Prince and the Pauper’ ” — in which he said the commission’s functioning seemed “to lack basic integrity.”

He compared his experience on the panel to “watching a glorious diamond being crushed by a sledgehammer.”

At a special meeting on Monday, commission members spent more than an hour in public session lamenting how the panel had been criticized in the news media and debating whether its deliberations should be open to the public — a proposal that one commissioner, Marvin E. Jacob, presented as a means to “restore the public’s confidence.”

“I make this motion only because I think this whole experiment is going to fall apart,” Mr. Jacob said. “We’ve already, as I said, lost one commissioner, and others have indicated a desire that they don’t need the aggravation.”

The commission rejected Mr. Jacob’s motion but agreed that it would disclose, after going into executive session, what, if anything, it had voted on.

After the panel went behind closed doors for about 90 minutes, its chairwoman, Janet DiFiore, a Democrat who is the Westchester County district attorney, announced that the commissioners had voted unanimously to start a full-scale investigation, but she would not disclose its subject or scope.

Mr. Silver, however, told reporters in New York City that he was pleased with the panel’s action.

“We believe a full investigation will show that we acted in good faith, pursuant to law, in what we believed was the best interests of the women,” the speaker said.

In a radio interview on Monday before the ethics commission met, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, repeated his threat to impanel his own investigatory panel, describing it as a “Plan B” if the ethics panel “did not work.”

But Mr. Cuomo also offered a defense of the ethics commission, asking people to “take a deep breath” before criticizing it.

“It’s been a good-faith effort, I believe, by all parties involved,” he said on WGDJ-AM. “Obviously it’s going to be a learning process, and to the extent we need to make some tweaks, we’ll make some tweaks.”

Two commissioners appointed by Mr. Silver objected to the governor’s warning that he might investigate on his own. Mr. Jacob said it was “coercive and threatening,” and another commissioner, Ellen Yaroshefsky, said she was “very offended.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2012, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuomo Is Open to ‘Tweaks’ in Ethics Panel. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe